In our latest podcast, (left to right) editors Henry
See, Scott Ogrin, and Joe Quinn chat about the more
common methods of mind control and their effects on the
population with special guests Jason and Jonathan.

From shopping at your local superstore to watching the
latest mainstream media news reports on the war on terror,
mind control and propaganda are widespread and dangerously
effective. You may not even realise how often we are
all "zapped" by some of the painfully simple control
measures that we discuss this week!

If you have any
questions for the Signs Team or would like to suggest
a topic for future Podcast discussion, you can write
us at:

In its comprehensive paper on post-war findings, the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently
accused the Bush administration of systematic misrepresentation.
They concluded that Bush had prior knowledge of the
absence of any evidence regarding Saddam Hussein's
chemical and biological weapons programmes before taking
the decision to go to war. Referring to the October
2002 National Intelligence Estimate report they further
high-lighted "an unusual number of dissenting
views by intelligence officials", as well as
the pressing of intelligence analysts to come to "more
threatening" conclusions regarding Iraq.
The lead author of the CEIP report, John Cirincione
stated: "The NIE was wildly off the mark." In
other words - they systematically lied. If so why?
Why was an administration allowed to go against intelligence
both from sub-divisions within the FBI and analysts
within the Oval Office? Clearly there is an agenda
of epic proportions. Having faith in decades of "information
domination" and the "dumbing down" of
its populace gave the neo-cons considerable justification
for pursing this agenda. Elements within the Pentagon
were heating the hype to stratospheric levels immediately
after the twin-towers attack as part of an operation
that had obviously been encouraged perhaps years before
the event. With a vision of a lucrative conquest in
sight under the sop of fighting terrorism, the Office
of Strategic Influence was born in early 2002 with
the objective of initiating "black propaganda" actions
against foreign press and journalists. The Office represented
much more than the age-old re-telling of major geo-political
porkies.

The Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld went out
of his way to bypass the enormous intelligence agency
briefings and to go to his own personalized office
where he could sift through and present the intelligence
that supported the war on Iraq and to jettison any
embarrassing data that could lead them away from a
unilateral military expansion. Indeed, it was because
many within the intelligence agencies had been providing
hard data that logically screamed at the administration
NOT to attack Iraq that the OSI was created, fitting
neatly into the existing executive shadow government.
Once the totally fictitious link between Saddam Hussein
and Osama Bin Laden had been established and primed
in the minds of mass America, Al Qaeda could be given
first billing spawned from covert and complex manipulations
by the CIA, Pakistani ISI and the Israeli Mossad. Bush
could then initiate the "shock and Awe" of
a "Christian crusade" against the terror
organisation and focused propaganda attack on anyone
else who disagreed with that "God-given" right.
What better way to ensure a panacea of domination than
by creating an enemy that is instantly malleable and
forever open to serve the ends of a specific doctrine
of control?

The Department of Defence had been sidelined in favour
of the concentrated "war room" of OSI headed
by Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden of the Air Force, and
according to a Guardian report from February 18 2002
"the new office has begun circulating classified proposals
calling for aggressive campaigns that use not only
the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert
operations." The article further states: "One
of the office's proposals calls for planting news items
with media organizations through outside concerns that
might not have obvious ties to the Pentagon, officials
familiar with the proposal said. General Worden envisions
a broad mission ranging from "black" campaigns
that use disinformation and other covert activities
to "white" public affairs that rely on truthful
news releases, Pentagon officials said." To illustrate
this point, on September 8th 2002 the Bush administration
planted a story in The New York Times written by Judith
Miller and Michael Gordon entitled: US says Hussein
intensifies quest for A-Bomb Parts, coming of course,
from "unnamed Bush officials." This was
one of many examples of basic media propaganda via
"sympathetic" journalists. The story was perfectly
timed as an effective advert for Saddam Hussein's Weapons
of mass destruction and the sought after vindication
of the US crusaders. The fact that the evidence was
false didn't matter. By the time journalists dug around
to find that the purchases of aluminium tubes were
obviously not intended for nuclear uses, the damage
had been done; further escalating the fear and enabling
Bush to carve another notch in his propaganda stick
which he continues to beat the American public with.
[...]

The Office of Strategic Influence appeared to be dismantled
in February 2002 after considerable jitters within
Pentagon circles and a minor media backlash. However,
this was wholly untrue. The name merely changed to
Office of Special Plans to appease the critics, this
time headed by Undersecretary of Defence Douglas Feith
with parental care from Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld, very
much still doting on their propaganda baby.

The OSP continued to broaden its aggressive evangelical
mission into all so-called allied nations in the Middle
East, Asia and Western Europe. Being spearheaded by
the shadow executive government and thus closely tied
to the future plans for FEMA and the designs of the
military industrial complex, more wholly undemocratic
funnelling is taking place from the $10 billion emergency
supplement to the Pentagon budget, though the amount
has not been disclosed. What is more worrying, but
not altogether surprising from a record of increasing
secrecy, is the fact that the majority of senior Pentagon
officials and Congressional military aides had no idea
about the plans of the OSP. The Pentagon however deemed
it acceptable to pay $100,000 a month (presumably of
tax payers' money) to a Washington-based international
consulting company called The Rendon Group run by John
W. Rendon Jr., a former campaign aide to President
Jimmy Carter. With their website opening catch-phrase: "Information
as an element of power," one can immediately
see why their PR and high level spinning is so attractive,
having already worked, most notably for the CIA and
the Kuwaiti royal family.

Although the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence
Agency are barred by law from propaganda activities
in the United States, to place undue credence on this
naive piece of legislation is to align ourselves with
wishful thinking on the scale of Chamberlain's "peace
in our time." Perhaps it was a purposeful ruse
to keep Congress and outer government minions satisfied.
If so, it would simply be following the normal pattern
of "natural selection" within US policy
making. In the present circumstances such laws are
not, and never have been worth the paper they are written
on. When these pieces of paper are waved in Congress
as a feeble reminder of democratic ideals, executive
orders can be passed and applied to counter such moves.
And when confronted with the few independent journalists
and government employees who have dared to speak out,
they simply shout "treason," deny,
obfuscate and rely on the mainstream media to douse
the flames of truth that will naturally, albeit briefly
appear amid the ever-present smokescreen.

In such an unhealthy climate the creation of the OSP
and other less "official" and
highly secretive operations can press ahead under the
direction of the shadow executive branches. If the
government is brazenly implanting draconian measures
at home and flouting international laws abroad as the
official face of governmental policy, then it becomes
a matter of simple logic that highly classified plans
and operations are being developed and finalized far
beyond the press, public and Congress. But it is also
likely that many personnel within governmental departments
and divisions within the intelligence agencies remain
partially ignorant, as analysts and governmental workers
discovered during the 9/11 cover-up, which of course,
still continues.

PSYOPS/"INFORMATION DOMINANCE"

A rather infamous military unit with a less than all-American,
apple pie history has been assigned to implement the
policies of the OSP: the Army's Psychological
Operations Command (PSYOPS). The unit is known to have
been deployed in Central America, Afghanistan and the
Balkans and is currently authorized to use computer
network attacks, psychological activities and deception,
as well as facilities and staff of the military global
public affairs apparatus that are now "officially" mandated.
Control of the Internet, the development of electronic
warfare against disobedient media, and the control
of commercial satellites are also part of its remit.
For example, In March 2000 the website fair.org (Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting) published the story from
the French Intelligence newsletter and the Dutch newspaper
Trouw that several officers from the PSYOPS unit at
Fort Bragg were allowed to work at CNN (though the
report title quotes more than 1,500 unconfirmed).The
story received little coverage.

In the 1980s, officers from the 4th Army PSYOPS group
staffed the National Security Council's Office of Public
Diplomacy (OPD), where stories were planted in the
US media in order to strengthen and support Reagan's
controversial Central American policies. Equally disturbing
was an investigation by the congressional General Accounting
Office who found that OPD had engaged in "prohibited,
covert propaganda activities," and as the Iran-Contra
scandal broke and the subsequent investigations that
followed, the office was eventually shut down. However,
the 4th PSYOPS unit is still very much in operation
and with, it seems, a new lease of life.

In combination with the National Security Agency's
major forays into highly advanced electronic surveillance
systems and mind control experimentation, PSYOPS takes
on a much greater threat than most of us realise or
indeed, will be prepared to accept.

Rauni Kilde, MD, former Chief Medical Officer of Finland,
lectures and writes about an NSA Mind Control system
using radio implants and microchips connected to satellites
that are similar to what can be find in past "NSA
PSYOPS" documents. Kilde writes: "With
electro-magnetic frequency (EMF) brain stimulation
fully coded, pulsating electromagnetic signals can
be sent to the brain, causing the desired voice and
visual effects to be experienced by the target. This
is a form of electronic warfare." Most certainly.
And this form of extreme harassment is increasing,
though by its very nature, it is notoriously difficult
to obtain the evidence, assuming of course that prosecution
is a viable option which in truth, it is not.

Citizens Against Human Rights Abuse (CAHRA) supports
many of the claims of systematic surveillance stalking
and virtual torture via electromagnetic waves and electronic
interference not just within the US. The disturbing
nature of the NSA and its famously secret activities
no doubt produces its fair share of internet bunkum.
Equally, there is far too much correlative and corroborative
evidence from a variety of sources to suggest that
it is merely conspiracy "cranking" at work.
It may well be all in the mind, but not in the way
some may prefer to think.

According to one researcher amongst many, Dr. Armen
Victoria's 1998 essay regarding 'The Military
Use of Electromagnetic Microwave and Mind Control Technology' states
the capability of cloning human EEGs for targeted mind
control purposes where a variety of emotional responses
and instinctive reactions:

have been identified and isolated from the EEG,
as 'emotion signature clusters'. Their relevant frequencies
and amplitudes have been measured, then the very
frequency/amplitude cluster is synthesised and stored
on another computer, each one of these negative emotions
properly and separately tagged. 'They are then placed
on the Silent Sound carrier frequencies and will
silently trigger the occurrence of the same basic
emotion in another human being.'

It appears that The Tri-Service Electromagnetic Advisory
Panel (TERP) represents the interests of all three
military services in the U.S. It is still conducting
some of the most advanced research in the world which
in turn stems from the investigations made by the Russian
pioneers in mind control technology during the early
1960s and 1970s. The U.S. Air Force has been research
into ocular injury by exposure to millimetre wave system,
bio-effects of High Power Microwave in low microwave
regions (S band) and Radio Frequency Radiation (RFR).
The use of High Power Microwave (HMP), by each of the
military services seems to be commonplace. Judging
by the wealth of research on the subject the US Navy
is also getting extremely excited at the prospect of
utilizing electro-magnetic waves as a psychotronic
weapon.

We may then understand that the recent Iraq invasion
represented an opportunity to test out not only the
new developments in microwave weaponry and other aberrations,
but a valuable opportunity to experiment with the latest
PSYOPS advances. As Guardian columnist John Sutherland
put it: "The battlefield will be the testing
ground for the US samurai. No more rhesus monkeys or
pigs but real, live Iraqis." According to Dr.
Oliver Lowry who has had the dubious honour of working
for the US military on several classified projects,
Iraqi soldiers may have been the latest unwitting guinea
pigs to further such advances which include:

…Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS), sometimes
called SQUAD…'According to statements made
by captured and deserting Iraqi soldiers, however,
the most devastating and demoralizing programming
was the first known military use of the new, high-tech,
type of subliminal messages referred to as ultra-high-frequency "Silent
Sounds" or "Silent Subliminals". Although
completely silent to the human ear, the negative
voice messages placed on the tapes alongside the
audible programming by PsyOps psychologists were
clearly perceived by subconscious minds of the Iraqi
soldiers and the silent messages completely demoralized
them and instilled a perpetual feeling of fear and
hopelessness in their minds.'

If this weren't horrifying enough we then have
the sector of "information dominance" to
complement such invasive excursions into our minds.
According to American military experts the first two
components of "information dominance" consist
of: 1) Building up and protecting friendly information;
and degrading information received by your adversary.
2) The ability to deny, degrade, destroy and/or effectively
blind enemy capabilities. This is nothing new, though
the Iraq war and the phantom linkage of a terrorist
plot will tend to burnish the steely resolve of those
who favour profitable exploitation and the search for
omnipotence. Perhaps this is one of the many reasons
for the 15 Information domination centres already established
in the US, Kuwait and Baghdad. The Ministry of Defence
and the Foreign office in the UK are reflecting Tony
Blair's evangelical attachment to Bush's
coat tails by placing information operations firmly
on the agenda with close links to the aforementioned
centres. A network of global connections are therefore
being created in order to formerly set in motion a
huge cross fertilisation of data which can then be
re-packaged and sent out to the world's media
and finally, the public.

The very fact tentative reporting of information domination
and PSYOPS operations are now even being discussed
in mainstream broadsheets – though still few
and far between – does not reflect a sudden and
rapid sea change within the military nor that it suggests
a previously wholesome, honourable and humanitarian
approach to geo-political and intelligence maneuverings,
much as the American people would like to believe in
their moral exceptionalism. The manipulation of information
to serve a specific end has a long history. Rather,
we see an Orwellian control system becoming less covert
due to the climate of stimulated fear and social engineering;
it can therefore be allowed to come to the fore without
many impediments to its continuing progress. If the
mainstream US media isn't towing the line due
to naive belief systems, then it is most assuredly
sitting in the lap of the Bush Administration through
vested political/corporate interests and/or the Zionist
lobby who have extraordinary leverage in American society,
let alone news reporting. What this means is that bureaucratic
barriers and constitutional safeguards that once at
least slowed the propensity for civil and human rights
abuses and breaches in international law are effectively
non-existent. America has placed the world on a "see-saw" colour-coded
alert according to its own purposely exacerbated terrorism
threat.

PSYOPS is the tool of an oligarchy and an empire that
is highly secretive and conspiratorial by nature. Most
governmental operations take place in secrecy as an
inherent dynamic of hierarchical, organizational behaviour.
Therefore, it is only a natural, albeit disturbing
chain of entropic events which are leading to a rapid
integration of propaganda and news media into the military
command structure. With a majority of reports from
Iraq by "embedded" journalists
relaying reports which are "positive" or "neutral," we
can then recognize the mainstream media as effective
instruments of "friendly" information
bolstering. The line is steadily blurring the distinction
between friend and foe, with PSYOPS operations and
the media (e)merging as one.

LIGHTS…CAMERA...REACTION!

On May 1st 2002, in a premature display of perceived
victory and bravado, the president honoured the gung-ho
and neo-macho premise of the movie Top Gun by swaggering
across the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and
posing for photographers. Photos of Bush with a "thumbs
up" sign appeared in magazines and internet sites.
One could almost here the cheesy rendition of the movie's
soundtrack: "highway to the danger-zone." Better
still, as you can see under the headline of this column,
we could buy a George Bush doll in authentic "Elite
Force Aviator" attire for the bargain
basement price of $39.99! Why of course! What price
the life of Iraqi civilians? A plastic "George
Bush" for American kids and cluster bombs for
Iraqi children six thousand miles away. It betrays
an extraordinary level of collective ignorance, cynical
profiteering and astonishing disrespect for lost civilian
lives. An inauguration of a world "danger-zone" it
will most certainly be, with US policy dictating and
creating the required "danger" for its
own purposes as it sees fit.

The Top Gun type mentality along with all the other
gun-slinger-dirty-dozen-rootin'-tootin'-meanest-varmint-this-side-of-Texas
clichés are on show here. Osama and Saddam are
the designated villains with the Middle East as the
town that's only big enough for Bush and his
magnificent seven. It remains to be seen whether Bush
will ride off into a desert sunset with his less than
stable spoils or ransack the next town as self appointed
sheriff. Whichever way the rig the next election, the
neo-con administration has and will avail itself of
one of the most potent moulders of our perceptions:
Movies.

The entertainment industry has long since been the
tool of successive shadow administrations and affiliated "think-tanks." Fear
and disinformation is the province of the CIA. It secretly
subsidizes many authors, media critics and journalists
via private foundations and front organizations which
are indirectly or directly linked to the Hollywood
industry. The present propaganda machine has subsumed
this medium into a potent weapon of subliminal and
downright ham-fisted mass programming to a greater
degree than ever before. For instance, did you ever
wonder why there was a steady flurry of war movies
spear-headed by Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan
in 1998? From 2000 to 2002 there was a tangible increase
in war film production both in the cinema and on T.V.
reaching a peak prior to 9/11 including: Windtalkers,
Black hawk Down, U-571, Band of Brothers (T.V.) The
Thin Red Line, The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, The Sum
of all Fears, K-19, Hart's War, Behind Enemy
Lines, and the most objectionable piece of sensational
tripe in the form of Jerry Bruickheimer's epic
Pearl Harbour, where the US rewrote history in true "Forest
Gump" style. This latter movie was perhaps the
most obvious piece of propaganda designed to elicit
the response of "America under attack" and
the accompanying mass expression of righteous indignation
that was required. Since 9/11 more than one third of
Hollywood productions are war movies or associated
fear mongering. "The Sum of All Fears" directed
by Phil Alden Robinson, and released in 2002 is a case
in point. A group of terrorists get their hands on
a nuclear device, which they explode in a US city,
hoping to start a war with Russia. It received the
endorsement and support of both the Pentagon and the
CIA. I wonder why.

It is also interesting to note that the most commercially
successful Hollywood director Steven Spielberg has
been responsible for some of the most popular movies
in motion picture history and the collective thought
patterns that followed. With this in mind, it is also
highly probable and for reasons we can only guess at,
that he is an artful propagandist in the pay of Bilderberg
Grp. and its affiliated shadow executive aspirations.

En masse, some of these films may have played a minor
role in moulding the psyche of this troubled nation,
just as they did during the intense paranoia of the
cold war era. They may serve to engender a sense of
patriotism, and an erroneous star spangled heroism
that inflates the national pride, and simultaneously
demands an emotional outlet. (Even those in the so-called
anti-war category may do this by feeding into the aura
of "war fever.") If the democrats are afraid
to speak out against the present fascism for fear of
not supporting the troops (most of whom are demoralised
and utterly desperate to return home) then the same
can could be said of the public at large where the
herd mentality can be at its strongest involving God,
the military, and the beloved home soil. Hollywood
is US culture. By the same token, the deification of
the movie market ensures that it is not simply a way
to relax and enjoy our leisure time – they
have become the incessant analgesic and anesthetic
to our own imagination and creativity; numbing our
cognitive abilities with bland, iconic formulas for
living; programming trite solutions for love and relating;
substituting voyeurism, violence and titillation for
the potential of cultivating true understanding and
greater awareness. Once we rely more and more on the
buffering arena of entertainment we become progressively
open to the subtle tinkering of our already pliable
emotions. It seems this objective fact has not been
lost on the neo-cons and it's military.

The BBC picked up on this stratagem
in a report from October 2001. We discover that US intelligence specialists
sought in secret, "advice on handling terrorist
attacks from Hollywood film-makers." According
to the trade paper Variety "a discussion group
between movie and military representatives was held
at the University of Southern California…" And
further: "The group is said to have been set
up by the US Army to discuss future terrorist activity
in the wake of the attacks of 11 September." Regardless
of the wisdom of consulting Hollywood for advice on
anything let alone military tactics, is this not rather
strange for such a plan of action to take place barely
a month after the 9/11 attacks? Unless of course, it
represented a single stage within a long-term strategy.
The report continues: "Among those reported to
have been involved were Die Hard screenwriter Steven
E.De Souza and Joseph Zito, director of Delta Force
One and Missing in Action. Other, more conventional,
feature makers were also said to have been present,
including Randal Kleiser, who made Grease."

"Grease"? Perhaps the military will dance
and sing their way into Syria? If only. The fact that
military intelligence are considering the advice of
B-movie writers and directors is disturbing enough,
it becomes especially worrisome when we consider the
bizarre reversal of those that are in the business
of killing, looking for advice from those who present
killing as sure-fire entertainment. It surely becomes
apparent that such an exercise would prove a potential
asset if they were considering how to capitalize on
future terrorist attacks along with the associated
emotional manipulation that could be carried out within
such scenarios. As a Variety spokesman mentions: "the
entertainment industry can offer expertise in understanding
plot and character, as well as advice on scenario training." Sound
familiar? Evidence strongly suggests, not only did
the President know about the imminent attack on the
Twin towers, there was also substantial circumstantial
and solid empirical evidence that this may have been
carefully crafted with major elements of simulation
from within the US itself. In other words, 9/11 was
largely manufactured to achieve ideological and political
goals most of which we are now witnessing. Finally,
the end piece of the report allows us to read between
the lines:

The US Army is also behind the university's [of
Southern California] Institute for Creative Technologies
(ICT). The ICT calls upon the resources and talents
of the entertainment industry and computer scientists
to help with virtual reality scenario simulation.
Variety reported that the ICT's creative director
James Korris confirmed that the meetings between
the film-makers and the US Army were taking place.
However, the paper added that Mr Korris had refused
to give details as to what specific recommendations
had been made to the US government.

Obviously more than his job's worth. The above
piece is I suspect, only the tip of the iceberg. When
we tie this in with the NSA classified surveillance
and PSYOPS technology that is far in advanced of anything
we see in the market place then such pooling of entertainment
utilities to bolster this same insider technology is
not at all far-fetched. But more importantly, it becomes
another method in which to utilize the psychopathology
of a nation and much of our world that lives through
movies. It is also clear that there is an open and "official" dimension
to this propaganda which has moved outwards to the
second tier of pyramidal operations. In other words,
they are so cocksure of their abilities to keep the
wool over our eyes they simply don't care anymore.

Since the Second World War we are now observing a "bleed-through" of
such experimentation across all intelligence and military
endeavours which necessarily must include the moulding
of the population through ALL means at their disposal.
Or in the words of one President Abraham Lincoln: "Public
sentiment is everything. With public sentiment nothing
can fail. Without it nothing can succeed. He who moulds
opinion is greater than he who enacts the laws." And
when you have control of both the laws and all possible
outlets for propaganda then public opinion is effectively
the clay that is permanently on the potter's
wheel. The waters of our sedentary lifestyles on the
one hand and the ever-increasing storms of hardship
on the other act to keep the clay manageable and open
to "problem-reaction-solution" scenarios
such as the rightly dramatic but Hollywood laden overtones
of the twin towers attack. It will not be too long
before you have a T.V. movie or a heavily financed "blockbuster" depicting
the events of 9/11 on the scale of The Towering Inferno.
You can be sure that Wim Wenders won't be in
the director's chair.

Many movies can be wonderfully inspiring art. However,
in a world where the lowest common denominator rules,
there are few that make it beyond the market maw of
commercial constraints, and if they do, then distribution
is weak. High culture is not an easy buck. And apparently
we now have a movie of The Alamo in production with
the tag line: "Stand your ground." Who
knows? Perhaps Dubya will consider implementing an
executive order for the lead role. It matters little
the path to glory: politics to acting – acting
to politics; both are understandably gaining a pre-nuptial
relationship where the concept of serving the people
is as meaningful as the residue from a "Mr. Slurpee" milk-shake.
Taken as one spoke in the wheel of a culture whose
denial is spinning way out of control, many movies
represent another sub-weapon in the formidable armoury
of the propaganda war.

SELF-ELECTION

The most dangerous slice of the propaganda pie is flying
full into voters' faces in the shape
of seriously flawed electronic voting systems. Vital
questions surrounding thousands of ballots which disappeared
from state polling results – most notably Florida
- have not been answered. With a little help from blackmailing
and back scratching within the Supreme Court George
Bush was finally dumped on his self-appointed electoral
throne like a spoilt child with a new toy to play with.
Indeed, the administration is already pumping money
into sophisticated data analysis for the presidential
campaign, and with the heightened praise and adulation
of the religious right gaining ground we will see a
powerful public impression of an electoral
"democratic" battle. But this is unfortunately a smoke-screen.
There are, without doubt, many disaffected and angry
Americans determined to vote this false president out
of office and a well-spring of opposition to the governments
polices. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if the
media and the majority of the sleeping public have
sufficient will, courage and the moral imperative to
resist corruption for a second time. What is more disheartening
still is the growing realisation that the neo-cons
may have been planning an election game that guarantees
Bush another term in office. [...]

It often doesn't take much to
make an eyewitness to a crime change her or his story.
While Mafia hardball tactics for intimidating witnesses
make the headlines, just seeing or hearing a different
version of the "facts" can be enough. One
key (as we've discussed before) is remembering the
context for an event. If we
can successfully recall that we personally witnessed
one version of the story as it occurred last Thursday,
then we're more likely to realize that it's different
from the article we read in the newspaper the next
day. If we don't recall the context of either
the original version or the revised version, our chances
for making a mistake increase.

So what's going on in our brain when we remember
both the context and the event itself, and what's
different when we don't? Yoko Okado and Craig Stark
designed a study to examine the problem. They showed
participants eight different slide shows telling
stories on topics ranging from students talking in
the hallway outside of class to the theft of a woman's
wallet. Each slide show had 50 pictures and was shown
twice. During the second showing, 12 of the pictures
were surreptitiously changed in an effort to create
false memories. Two days later, participants were
tested on their memory for those 12 critical slides.

Sure enough, a significant portion
of the time, participants responded with false memories:
They believed they had seen the same slide in both
presentations (the man stole the wallet and hid behind
a tree), when in fact they had seen two different slides
(in the first slide show, the man hid behind the door,
but in the second show, he hid behind the tree).

This result matched earlier
research finding that when people watch a movie and
then are presented with a written account that doesn't
match the movie, they will often falsely "remember" that
the written story agrees with the movie. But
Okado and Stark were able to take their research
one step further, because their participants had
agreed to perform the task while undergoing a constant
fMRI, which mapped brain activity in three dimensions
as they watched the slide shows.

Other fMRI research had previously revealed that when
accurate memories are formed, they correspond to increased
activity in particular parts of the brain: the medial
temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex. Okado and
Stark's data matched this finding: when participants
had accurate memories, these parts of the brain were
more active during the first slide show. When they
had false memories, these parts of the brain were more
active during the second, "false" slide show.

What's more, Okado and Stark
observed something else: a trend toward increased
activity in other areas of the brain (parts of the
hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex) when accurate
memories were not being formed. Okado and
Stark argue that this activity may be related to
the inability to correctly recall the context for
an item. Other studies have found that the left parahippocampal
cortex is among the regions responsible for recalling
the source of a memory. Since the region is less
active when the critical second slide is presented
during creation of a false memory, participants may
not be forming the necessary contextual information
they need to recall that the misleading slide was
not, in fact, present during the original slide show.
Similarly, when true memories were formed - when
the misleading picture in second slide show was presented,
but the participant still accurately remembered the
correct first slide - these areas were again more
active, suggesting that people had correctly recalled
the context of the misleading second slide.

So apparently one of the key moments
in determining whether a memory will be true or false
occurs right as that memory is formed. During that
critical instant, our entire conception of the past
- right or wrong - is shaped.

So what does this say about Mafia "hardball" attempts
to influence witnesses? Ironically, they may be doing
exactly the wrong thing. If a witness is intimidated
by physical force to change her original story, isn't
she more likely to remember the context? It
might be more effective to use subtler techniques to
get witnesses to change their tune.

Comment: We
are reminded of all those people who are absolutely
certain that they saw an airliner slam into the Pentagon,
when all the evidence indicates that it was not a
large passenger jet that struck the US military headquarters.
Our eyes and brains can clearly deceive us, especially
during emotionally traumatic events. As such, it behooves
us all to consider the facts - the hard data - even
if we think we know what actually happened.

On the fourth
anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Laura Knight-Jadczyk
announces the availability of her latest book:

In the years since the 9/11 attacks, dozens of books
have sought to explore the truth behind the official
version of events that day - yet to date, none of
these publications has provided a satisfactory answer
as to WHY the attacks occurred and who was ultimately
responsible for carrying them out.

Taking a broad, millennia-long perspective, Laura
Knight-Jadczyk's 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth uncovers the true nature of
the ruling elite on our planet and presents new and
ground-breaking insights into just how the 9/11 attacks
played out.

9/11: The Ultimate
Truth makes a strong case for the idea that September
11, 2001 marked the moment when our planet entered
the final phase of a diabolical plan that has been
many, many years in the making. It is a plan developed
and nurtured by successive generations of ruthless
individuals who relentlessly exploit the negative
aspects of basic human nature to entrap humanity as
a whole in endless wars and suffering in order to
keep us confused and distracted to the reality of
the man behind the curtain.

Drawing on historical and genealogical sources, Knight-Jadczyk
eloquently links the 9/11 event to the modern-day
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She also cites the clear
evidence that our planet undergoes periodic natural
cataclysms, a cycle that has arguably brought humanity
to the brink of destruction in the present day.

For its no nonsense style in cutting to the core
of the issue and its sheer audacity in refusing to
be swayed or distracted by the morass of disinformation
that has been employed by the Powers that Be to cover
their tracks, 9/11:
The Ultimate Truth can rightly claim to be THE
definitive book on 9/11 - and what that fateful day's
true implications are for the future of mankind.

Published by Red Pill Press

Scheduled for release in October
2005, readers can pre-order the book today at our bookstore.